I’m not at all surprised that there’s no iPhone SDK. I think that Apple has always planned to eventually open up development of real iPhone applications, but it was unrealistic to expect this right away. And it’s in everyone’s interest for them to take their time and get it right. It’s unfortunate, however, that Steve Jobs has been so deceptive on this point. The Apple Product Cycle is familiar enough by now that I don’t think anyone really believes what Jobs says. And, more importantly, it’s insulting to portray some browser hooks as an SDK for writing true iPhone applications. The iPhone Web applications aren’t even at the level of Dashboard widgets, and Apple certainly isn’t using them to write the iPhone’s Finder. I’d have been happier if Jobs had simply said that having a real Web browser means access to real Web applications.

Safari 3 is very nice, but unfortunately the beta requires an installer, completely replaces Safari 2, and even requires a reboot. For shame!

As expected, Apple isn’tcompeting with Parallels and VMware, but they are making Boot Camp switching a little less painful. Keeping in mind the Apple Product Cycle, I expect this to change in 10.6 or 10.7.

Overall, it was a disappointing keynote. I didn’t expect the top secret features to materialize, but it’s still a let-down after Job’s hype last year and all of Apple’s Microsoft bashing since then. And there was no new hardware. (So much for Apple moving that from the summer Macworld to WWDC.) I hope no one took Fake Steve’s advice to buy AAPL, because right now it’s down since that time, closing down 3.45% for the day while Creative was up 3.91% (though it’s still way down from its pre-iPod heyday).

Like the keynote, I think Leopard looks underwhelming for end users. However, as a developer I’m very excited about it. There are numerous under-the-hood changes that will make for better applications that run faster and that can be developed more quickly. Developers will get hammered with this message throughout the conference, but thanks to the keynote it isn’t what most people will be discussing.

You say the Finder isn't fixed. Are you referring to the lack of the "spatial Finder" that John Siracusa so elegently describes or that issues with dealing with unmounted volumes, latency and SPODs are still there?

I think the Finder should either be fully spatial or better at browsing. Right now it does neither very well. That aside, there are just a lot of things in the Tiger Finder that don't work very well. I'm thinking of search, keyboard navigation, dealing with permissions problems, renaming, latency and SPODs, etc. Maybe Leopard fixes some of these "polish" issues; apparently AutoFS will help with the SPODs.

Did you see this? EA isn't going to produce Mac-native games after all: they're going to use binary translation.

Polite words cannot adequately express my disappointment in Steve Jobs at this moment. It now appears half the keynote was smoke and mirrors -- at an extremely insulting level, and the other half we'd seen before. I mean, the keynote is always smoke and mirrors, but there's always been substance backing it up. This time, there's nothing there.

Chris: When you said "binary translation" the first thing I thought of was that they had a tool to convert a compiled Windows app into a compiled Mac app. However, reading more about Cider it sounds more like WINE. The actual Windows code is loaded into memory on the Mac, and it's linked to a library of emulated Windows APIs.

I agree, the presentation was mostly smoke, mirrors, and demoware. Oh, and improvements for Windows users! I hear tell that Safari for Windows handles ICC color profiles, which is nice for photographers like myself.
But for me and my Mac clients the big concern is using computers to solve problems as a group. Call it groupware, collaboration software, whatever. This also includes syncing and offline access of shared resources for Macs, phones and other devices. Apple could do a lot better in this area.

Dude, you're kinda selective on the FSJ advice. He's been advising buying aapl for months, and the stock is higher now than it was in every instance, except the one you cite. And in that one he doesn't explicitly advise buying aapl, nor even give a target.

You guys are ridiculous (most of you). Jobs said a few years back that he wanted to move away from using these "big bang" events like WWDC and MacWorld. And this type of commentary is exactly why.

It was just an update. I mean does every single keynote have to be amazing and earth-shattering.

Some of you really sound like you think there is real innovation left in the desktop environment. Sorry, no. Not Apple, not Microsoft, no one. Expecting some dramatic innovation in desktop OSes is like expecting some great new development from the world of telegraphs.

Michael: I thought I read that it was actually binary translation combined with WINE. But perhaps that's an assumption I made. Seems like they'd be foolish not to process the binary to make the job easier, given that they don't want or need to run random binaries in this case.

Don't you see the obvious reason for this? Imagine novice users wanting to hop on the beta bandwagon who actually end up removing the production version of Safari in the process. Walking a user through an "uninstall" to recover a non beta version of Safari seems to be a great idea. Apple is just covering their bases as far as support goes.

[QUOTE]search, keyboard navigation, dealing with permissions problems, renaming, latency and SPODs[/QUOTE]
1) What is wrong with search? The one issue i had was lack of booleans, and that has been added. (Maybe it is slightly slow too, but I am sure leopard like every other 10.x release before will speed things up)
2) What is the problem with keyboard navigation and renaming?
3) Not having used leopard, are you sure permissions issues have not been fixed?
4) Job's keynote seemed to indicate that network latency issues have been fixed. I also remember reading that connecting to one network will not lock up Finder like it used to.
5) What are SPODs?

I am honestly asking for answers to these questions, not trying to be sarcastic or anything.

Also, it is my uneducated impression that Finder has switched from being a Carbon to a Cocoa app. Do you think that would make future updates faster and more likely?

You're completely misreading the negativity. It's not the keynote content, it's how the content was delivered. If Steve had nothing to report, like at Macworld in January, that's fine, but don't B.S. us. He managed expectations appropriately then. He didn't do that this time, and the overblown pre-show hype didn't help.
We are developers. Our livelihood depends on the health of the Mac platform as a whole. We can't afford to be complete fanboys as well.

That said, at least part of the substance was B.S., too.

I have regularly seen innovation and lesser -- but still useful and fun -- evolution on the desktop. It can certainly be done. I know Apple can do better than this. _Third parties_ regularly do better than this. Years ago, Siracusa laid out a map for Apple to FTFF, and instead of using doing that they hire a summer intern to make the Finder into iTunes for Files.

That the Leopard UI isn't more advanced than this is an indication that Steve Jobs has taken his eye off the OS X ball and had (or trusted) no one to pick up the slack while his attention was diverted to the iPhone. It's not just engineering resources -- it potentially speaks volumes about how Apple needs to change internally in order to stay healthy on all fronts, as opposed to just one or two. Why has .mac languished? Because Steve doesn't use it, and no one else has authority (or the brass) to really fix it. I'm only guessing here, but given the evidence all around, I'm probably on target.

It's not just the desktop. Where's the hardware? The Mac mini badly needs an update; you can't tell me the iMac has reached it's ultimate form, although you might make that case for the Mac Pro enclosure; a significant number of would-be Mac switchers are clamoring for a minitower, etc.

Advice to Steve Jobs: cut the keynote in half next time, rather than BSing through a full hour. Scheduling an hour instead of two will also set expectations more appropriately.

That all said, I agree with MJT that Leopard is probably underwhelming for end users (although it ties up a lot of loose ends), but I think _much_ less so than Tiger was.

sam: I just thought it was interesting given that FSJ always says to buy. I couldn't find the exact post, but I think he recently said that it was going over 130.

Matty: Jobs himself built up expectations with last year's talk about secret features. I think there's a lot of room left for innovation in the desktop.

Matthew Yohe: I didn't say Safari 3 shouldn't have an uninstaller; I said it shouldn't need an installer. It should have been a stand-alone drag-and-droppable application like WebKit Nightly. That way you could run it side-by-side with Safari 2 and you wouldn't have to worry about its beta-quality Web Kit potentially causing problems for other applications by overwriting the stable version of Web Kit. There have already been reports of it causing BBEdit to crash, and I've seen it break the build script for PyObjC.

addicted: I don't want to get into details here, but in brief: (1) the basic OS X filename search (both the interface and the results) doesn't work as well in Tiger as it did in previous versions of OS X, which didn't work as well as in OS 9. (2) keyboard focus feels off to me in columns view, type-selection is unreliable, and renaming shouldn't select the extension by default. (3) I know some things that have been fixed and others that haven't, but I'm under NDA. (5) SPOD (Spinning Pizza of Death) means the rainbow cursor that OS X shows when an application isn't responding. I hope that helps. Even I find discussion of the Finder tired at this point, because nothing much as changed in all these years.

Chris: I agree that Tiger was also kind of underwhelming for users, but it was similarly a great release for developers.

I think the pre-event hype is always overdone and all this negitive reaction is overdone. Too much was read into Jobs' "Top Secret" comment. He's a showman and salesman, that's his job. Clearly he didn't want Microsoft trying to immitate (poorly) features like stacks or CoverFlow. These may not be earth shattering innovations, but they are cool, nicely done, and make Vista look even more amaturish than it already does; but more importantly, I think they will make interacting with the OS more interesting, maybe even useful.

That said, Leopard will be a nice upgrade that will reveal it's "secrets" with use. It will be all the little things that you will appreciate. I'm excited to get it. Tiger seemed rather boring too when it came out, but it has grown on me over time; I expect the same thing with Leopard.

OS X is a solid platform from which Apple can continue to innovate, expand, and grow. EA coming back is a very positive sign of the health of OS X market share, which seems well poised to grow at an exponential rate.

I'll save the "revolutionary" changes for OS-X1. For now, I'm a happy Mac user who gladly wait in line to get my Leopard upgrade.

How can you tell us non-developers that the Leopard looks underhwhelming, and yet you are thrilled about it? if Leopard makes our job easier / more fun / etc, then it will benefit the rest of us who use the software that you write.

Well, this goes to show that even developers are not immune to the SJDF...
Apart from the hype and the fact that half of it was a repeat, I'd say this is the nicest and most significant OS update.
Backup, stacks, spaces and boot camp - all in average-user-usable form - combined with a unified look and an itunes-like finder are a big thing for end users (yes I'd like another finder as well, but I'm not average-user). And the developer niceties behind the smoke and mirrors are not to be sneezed at.
And for us poor Java developers, having Safari on Windows is actually a huge thing. Strange no one has picked that one up.

The biggest reason for Safari 3 requiring an installer is because it replaces the WebKit framework. That's not really something one should be expected to do by hand.

Why does it do that? Well, the rendering in Safari 3 has been drastically improved. like, this is a bigger leap than from 1.x -> 2.0. They need to check that it doesn't mess any WebKit-using app up seriously... which is probably part of the reason for the beta release in the first place.

No one has even mentioned Back to My Mac. For me this is huge. Being able to control macs over the internet without having to have static IP addresses may be nothing to developers, but to a user like me who has to support his parents it at last makes .Mac worthwhile. It will literally change my life.

A lot of the negative posts sound like the author feels personally betrayed by Apple, especially with regards to the iPhone SDK.

I don't understand why Mac devs feel that Apple owes them an iPhone SDK. Why should Mac devs have any more to offer in the mobile space than all those people developing Java craplets for other mobile platforms?

I hear Microsoft has a great SDK for their SmartPhone platform. Why don't you develop for that? .NET, C#, VB, Javascript, C/C++ Win32, MFC, ATL, ODBC, OLEDB, even SQL Server for Pete's sake! - all that any warm-blooded dev could possibly desire!!!

But I don't see any of you developing for Windows Mobile, so I guess mobile apps can't be *that* important to your business models.

So don't feel so betrayed. Stop feeling 'insulted'.

Wake up. Realise that iPhone may contain OS X but Apple's business model for the iPhone is more akin to the iPod than to the Mac. The iPhone isn't a general purpose device. For Apple (in contrast to Microsoft) it isn't about the platform. It isn't about the third-party developers.

It isn't about *you*.

Just like with the iPod. And that's why you aren't important to them. And *that's* why there is no SDK at the moment.

And that's probably why you feel betrayed.

Well, realise that iPhone is based on OS X not for the benefit of you, the developer, but for the benefit of the consumer in terms of the functionality and production values Apple can provide as a *product* and not as a platform.

So what exactly did Jobs say? He openly said that there is no SDK. He pointed out that it contains a mature AJAX/Web2.0 client. And he reminded everyone that AJAX/Web2.0 apps are the modern way to distribute functionality anyway.

Did this dissappoint 5000 Cocoa- & desktop-obsessed Mac OS X developers? Of course it did. Does Apple care? No? Why not? Because at the current time they don't want to have to worry about solving deployment issues for developers who feel the need to create Sudoku for the iPhone.

Because this doesn't add any value to the iPhone as a product. Because Apple is confident enough in the product itself to go ahead without you. At least initially. Once the product's initial shine has worn off then maybe they'll have a need for you.

And maybe they will introduce an SDK then. But not now. Because they simply don't need you now.

Nick: Back to My Mac is a nice technology, but most home users that I know don't have a real IP address (even a dynamic one), so they won't be able to use it. It's not a Copilot replacement.

John: As I tried to explain in the post, we're not insulted that there's no iPhone SDK; we're insulted that Jobs tried to pass off a Web browser as "a very sweet solution" for writing applications that "look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone."

"There are some really uneducated comments surrounding WebKit and Safari on this blog."

I was thinking exactly the same thing. Anyone who has actually downloaded a WebKit nightly should know better.

On another note, re: lackluster WWDC keynote.... It seems to me that developers are upset that Leopard doesn't offer more from an end user's perspective... all the while ignoring all of the massive work Apple has done in Leopard to make *developers'* lives and jobs easier. (Objective C 2.0 anyone? Revamped XCode? 64-bit libraries? Core Anim? etc. etc. etc.?)

There is a lot of meat in this release... just not much that's immediately visible to the end user. Developers will make Leopard worthwhile for end users.

It's time to step up to the plate, folks. The ball has been thrown. Are you going to knock it out of the park or let it land in the catcher's mitt?

However after trying it out, you never want to, it makes you more focused, and less distracted. I thought it was ugly, then tried it. It's actually very good for productivity.

It's fast.

Stacks are fantastic.

The new finder is absolutely the best part. How many years have we wanted a cocoa finder? It's HERE!!!!! Browsing network shares is no longer met with delays, it's using the fast Unix finally. I can try to mount 10 shares without every seeing a cursor.

Proper multi-threaded support. No more pauses when clicking on the menubar or anything else. Apps keep chugging along.

No more beachball so far.

It's the perfect OS for productivity. No crazy changes, just refinement to the extreme.

It's a beautiful thing!

DVD player has been able to play HD-DVDs for a long time. It has blu-ray and HD-DVD settings in prefs now.

Dock works fine on the sides, 3D but the icons are sideways (proper) with shadow. Looks awesome on the side. I'd post pictures but I'd rather not be in Apple prison.
-----------------

Thanks for replying to my q's guy. Actually, I read the Macrumors forum post too, which gave me the impression about the cocoa finder (although its stupid to rely on one commenter, just I did not remember where I had that info from).

I am pretty sure that things like extensions being selected by default have been fixed. Agreed that filename searching is not as good as Panther, but once Apple makes a jump to Siracusa's vision of Metadata, filenames will not be important at all. An itunes like Finder, as well as Spotlight Comments is a step in that direction. (Although, with the additional control Leopard's spotlight offers, search by filename might become instantaneous).

Most people expected Leopard to have all these dramatic changes incorporated because of the time since Tiger. However, what a lot have not realised is that Apple released one more OS in the interim, OS X for Intel, as well as extended OS X's reach into other devices. I am willing to cut Apple a little slack for that.

However, there is no denying Apple set themselves up for this backlash by creating unrealistic expectations, as far as Leopard was concerned ('Top Secret'). However, the iphone SDK backlash is extremely childish. Once again, I will refer you back to Siracusa's most recent article, where he described this exact scenario of a WebKit interface, while the APIs are solidified. On the flip side, SJ did come across as demeaning, and insulting.

Michael: in reference to your comment to Nick about Back to My Mac you said that most home users don't have a real IP address-- I am not sure what you mean. Doesn't a router have an IP assigned from the ISP, and NAT give the machine an IP? Also, how can one tell if someone has a real IP address? I am in the exact same situation as Nick in terms of supporting my parents' Macs from afar, and was really looking forward to Back to My Mac.

Craig: By "real IP address" I mean an address that's unique across the entire Internet, so that anyone with Internet access can type it in and connect to your machine. Addresses that start with 10, 172.16, and 192.168 are only unique within a private network and are not accessible to anyone outside that network.

In terms of Back to My Mac, there are two potential problems. First, does your ISP give you a real IP. Sometimes, for example, your DSL router will have a private address generated by your ISP's NAT. Second, are you using NAT yourself. Your AirPort Base Station might have a real address, but then it generates a 192.168 address for your Mac. I suppose it's possible that Apple is doing what Copilot does and avoiding NAT issues by routing all the traffic through their server, but that seems unlikely.

Michael: thanks for your response. I will have to dig into my network settings more when I get home from work, but I am using NAT on my AirPort Extreme (draft n) to get a 10 or 172 or 192.168 address. I'd hope for my $99/year Apple would be able to match Copilot's service!

Even if not, I have noticed in my network pref pane that I have an IPv6 address... could Back to My Mac be using that as a unique identifier? (either by itself or by tunneling through IPv4)

Well, NAT is Network Address Translation, so it translates your 'real' IP to your private one, say 80.46.28.32:400 to 10.0.0.9:800. For all intents and purposes, port 400 on your 'real' IP is your machine within the LAN. There should be no problem with this and Back to My Mac. You can set up something similar for yourself with DynDNS.

Michael - i agree completely with your assessment of the finder. It needs an overhaul and pronto! I am so tired of the SPOD factor when i use nfs mounted disks and at other times such as when i mistakenly do a right/click on a file on a server and the SPOD goes on for ten min. ENOUGH!. As you are a developer hopefully you can get through to apple on our behalf to start fixing the Finder. It needs to be less in our face. And eye candy don't do nothin for me. Give me PRODUCTIVITY

So, I gotta say that I think there is a lot for developers here, unless you were hoping for a full no SDK for the iPhone (and I think this might happen some day, if and when the phone proves to be what most think it will be, and they figure out a way to "qualify" "APPL certified aps." We've been told over and over again that the device would be closed for now. So let it go, and get a little creative with some great off-the-shelf knowledge and tools we all have already--standards compliant web dev code.

I agree with Michael's statement in the comments, that this is very similar to Tiger in that it's not a major user release, but there are some exciting evolutionary things (like the Finder/desktop improvements, which seem so integrated I am not sure why they are treated as two sep things... it's all UI, and for me the Finder, which includes the desktop going back to Mac OS 1. But, as he said, there's a ton of new stuff to build off here.

I will have to comment on the Finder after some serious use, but I think it's still missing some true advancements that could have made it stand out more technologically, feature wise, rather than so much eye candy. For example, though not pretty, Path Finder is a true workhorse and could have inspired in itself a ton of improvements to the standard Finder. Most obvious, are tabbed windows, though that might start looking a little crazy with iTunes cover flow taking over (I suppose you wouldn't use tabs in that mode though). I am still holding out hope that Tabs make it into list and column view, the way tabs made a last minute appearance in Safari 1.0.

People are ranting about how Apple has been putting too many resources on the iPhone, but I think they are missing what's really going on here. OS X development during the last two + years has been more than Leopard --it's been OS X iPhone, OS X Mac, (and OS X ATV to a lesser degree, since that runs 10.4.7 I think), and it looks like Safari for Windows as well. We can't get inside Steve's head, but it looks like there is a broader thing going on here, and it's cross platform. At the end of the day, all this stuff has to work together. It's not one big Trojan Horse--some point to iTunes, or Win Safari, or the iPhone as Trojan Horses, but I actually think it's a broader collective strategy. Sure they may be writing as they go, but at least it's a strategy.

Michael, Addicted--SPOD and AutoFS: I think this is one of the biggest improvements for users. No glitter here, just pure usability improvements. How many of us have to suffer through infinite spinning beachballs when trying to mount a new volume, find a volume, disconnect a volume, or, and here is the big one... a volume disconnects itself for some reason, unannounced, and OS X sputters around with the spinning beach ball, locking up the entire machine (and what's the deal here, maybe someone can explain, what happened to protected memory)?

I am hoping to hear about more surprises like AutoFS. Little incremental changes like this, and some that were mentioned like better sharing across Windows and Unix (how many times will we here that?), now with Spotlight. These things add up. I mean Tiger itself is still considered a worthy (if not better by some accounts) Vista alternative. Leopard continues the evolution we've been watching since 10.0 came out. None of these were as revolutionary new as 10.0, XP or Vista (well I probably shouldn't include Vista), but collectively, these evolutionary releases have resulted in a better OS.

On Safari Windows--Good strategic move to put Apple in everyone's face a little more and get some more web dev mind share. Even a marginal uptake by Windows users could help push Safari up to 10+%, and make it required testing for web sites. Additionally, it will help with the iPhone, because the more sites that work well for Safari, the better the iPhone experience. Oh, and I have been testing this heavily the last two days on my ThinkPad/XP machine, which runs heavy web aps 90% of the time (much more than desktop aps at this company). I have only seen one problem on one web ap. But what's more interesting, is that out of the gate, it runs many web aps better than IE and FF, and the aps were all optimized for IE. It looks like others' experience with Win Safari has been mixed, but I think I may be able to put IE to bed on that machine.

UI: I know this is only cosmetics, but considering that design and the visual "ahh" factor is so important to Apple, the new conforming UI is one of the most pleasant things about this release. This puts Apple back to where they started, and I hope developers follow suit. Mac users will already be in better shape when Leopard comes out, with this UI, and the lack of the "anything goes" mentality of Win developers.